May God bless you as you wrap up the current year by
reflecting on his love and begin the new year with the hope and encouragement
that come from being united with Christ.
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| Last winter we actually had snow in OR. |
I dearly hope that this letter is not in lieu of Christmas
cards, but momentum runs against me. I
can't think of a year since I've been married that I have gotten out all my
cards on time. If you've gotten a card from us consistently, I have no
explanation. If you haven't, it's
nothing personal. It's just the
season. Sometimes I wonder how life was
simpler for my parents because Christmas was always ready when I was growing
up. The cards were always sent, the goodies
were always plenteous, and the stockings were always hung at least two weeks
before Christmas. The only answer I can come
up with is only that we had no Internet back then.
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| Notice the fireplace. That was one of our major projects this year. |
The theme of our year has been the provision of our Lord
and God, specifically centering around our new house.
Last year in October, we moved into a pleasant little two bedroom house
in Forest Grove, Oregon, comfortably priced because the previous tenants had
taken less-than-stellar care of it, and proceeded to make it our own. This year we have learned the joys of
refinishing floors, of painting, of installing a woodstove, of laying and
taking up flooring, of replacing appliances, and even laying a bit of tile.
Our house has a large yard with several fruit trees, and we
have learned how to prune and when to harvest.
I've gotten back into canning and jam making, and Seth has been
experimenting with fermenting cider.
It's a great comfort to open our pantry and see pears and plums and
applesauce, but man, it was a lot of work in the making. I didn't always appreciate the comfort when I
was peeling our organic pears (we all know that organic can simply mean buggy,
right?) or splitting prunes in a stuffy kitchen, but we do appreciate it
now.
Seth is in the middle of his fourth year as a customer
service engineer at ASML, a Dutch company that makes micro-processing machines
for Intel. His workload has been growing
considerably toward the end of this year as Intel expands in our area, and next
year, he expects it to grow even more as the company installs three new
machines (when I say machine, you should think of something roughly the size of
your dining room that makes lines smaller than a human hair). Seth also serves our church as a pastoral
elder and is thinking about chaplaincy ministry in the near future.
Annika is growing by leaps and bounds. In fact, every time family sees her, they
say, "Has she grown?" The
answer is yeah, probably. She is in
first grade this year, and seems to enjoy school with moderation. The homework is never a problem for her, and
she has a large group of classmates that she counts as friends. She is passionate about everything she does,
especially her artwork, and we hope to get her involved in music too in the
coming year.
I have been picking up some ESL tutoring at the local
universities. There is currently an
influx of Saudi Arabian students in the U.S., and I've had the privilege of
working with several of them to help them become more proficient in their
English. I've also started substitute
teaching a couple of days a week. On
Tuesdays, I meet with an ESL Bible study group at our church in addition to a
little bit of work in the church library and some music with the praise team
when they need a flute.
We took a break for a family reunion this summer, so most of my extended family finally got to meet the "elusive Seth" and vice versa. Then Seth and I competed in my first (his second) Warrior Dash this fall. Seth spent a couple of weeks in Eindhoven for training with his company. But for the most part, we've been here enjoying the fruits that laboring in one's own house can bring and remembering that the future is always opening up in front of us, one providential day at a time.
Much Faith, Hope, and Love to Everyone.
Seth, Jennifer, and Annika
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